Matthew Hughes: about the author

The name I answer to is Matt Hughes. I write fantasy and suspense fiction. To keep the two genres separate, I now use my full name, Matthew Hughes, for fantasy, and the shorter form for the crime stuff. I also write media tie-ins as Hugh Matthews.

I’ve won the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, and have been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Endeavour, A.E. Van Vogt, and Derringer Awards.

I was born sixty-five years ago in Liverpool, England, but my family moved to Canada when I was five. I’ve made my living as a writer all of my adult life, first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and — from 1979 until a few years back– as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia.

I’m a university drop-out from a working poor background. Before getting into newspapers, I worked in a factory that made school desks, drove a grocery delivery truck, was night janitor in a GM dealership, and did a short stint as an orderly in a private mental hospital. As a teenager, I served a year as a volunteer with the Company of Young Canadians (something like VISTA in the US). I’ve been married to a very patient woman since the late 1960s, and I have three grown sons.

In late 2007, I took up a secondary occupation — that of an unpaid housesitter — so that I can afford to keep on writing fiction yet still eat every day. These days, any snail-mail address of mine must be considered temporary; but you can send me an e-mail by clicking on my name in the sidebar of this page. I’m always interested to hear from people who’ve read my work.